Hi folks. I actually posted in the water quality section after getting some erroneous (I think!) data from the Penn State lab. Me and a guy I work with just purchased an old limestone quarry pond in western PA. I've been digging through the older posts - this is quite the forum! I also just noticed a news report on the web about a significant fish kill in a Reno area lake - Sparks Marina. They biologists think it was a rapid turnover. Hopefully not something we need to worry about. Thanks everyone who has posted and to the folks to keep this forum up and running.
Dale

Welcome aboard Dale and good luck to you in your adventure. If ya think this is a cool forum, just wait.

Rapid turnover and resulting temporary poor water quality are a possibility in just about every water body deep enough to thermally stratify. Stratification will occur in ponds as shallow as 5to7 ft deep depending on numerous variables.

Now you have me wondering what's next!

Bill, I hope we don't have that situation. I figured that was an extreme event, but maybe not? We don't even know how deep the pond is yet. I suppose it's another thing to figure out, which is a good thing as long as we don't have a fish kill (not sure what fish we have either). Thanks

I see that you are near New Castle PA which probably gets a significant amount of lake affect Lake Erie snow cover during the winter. Shallow ponds less than 12-14 ft deep and that contain the year's left-over dead weeds and decent amounts of fall leaf litter are both big items that will consume dissolved oxygen under snow covered ice. Thus you will have a hard time keeping most fish alive for time spans of 5-8 yrs in a row. The deeper the pond the more dissolved oxygen there will be stored in reserve to keep fish alive during winter snow cover. Living with the pond for several years will tell the 'rest of the story'. To help a lot to reduce winter fish kills consider using bottom aeration placed in shallow water 4-6 ft deep.

Bill, We are about 15 miles due west of New Castle, bordering OH, so definitely some lake effect. Do you typically expect winter to be the critical time in our area? Aeration will be some time in the future - no power within 1/2 mile of the pond. We might be able to run poly pipe cross-country. Solar is getting cheaper, but it's hard to get much out of batteries in the winter. I'm hoping it's deep enough we don't need it, at least near term. We might get a chance to check things out this weekend or next. Thanks, Dale

Winters with extended snow cover typically make it very hard for maintaining high quality fisheries for the long term. However this depends a lot of pond depth, amount of dead organics in the pond and length of time the pond is snow covered.